


Weekend in Badlands

by Geeneelee



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Beer, Camping, Comedy, Fluff, Gen, Road Trips, Team Bonding, just a short one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:03:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geeneelee/pseuds/Geeneelee
Summary: Sniper planned for a weekend alone camping in the Badlands. He almost got it--just not the "alone" part.





	Weekend in Badlands

**Author's Note:**

> For the Mercenary Park Secret Santa! Sorry this is so late, I hope you enjoy it any way. The giftee asked for something gen with Sniper and team bonding. Hope you like it Sarah!

It had been a slippery slope. Sniper knew it right away. And yet….

 

And yet.

 

Here he was, with every goddamn member of Team Fortress packed into one of three vans, trundling along through the New Mexican desert like a caravan of murderers. Not even camping was safe from these hooligans.

 

It had started out with Engie approaching Sniper after lunch, asking if he would take Scout along for the weekend. Sniper had previously mentioned that he was planning to camp out in the desert by the Hale River, since the next few days were strangely clear of missions. Suspiciously. 

 

(They’d deal with that later, no doubt.)

 

Scout, as Engie had explained, was getting a little bit twitchy on base. Young man like that was used to being able to get up and go to the movies or the park or wherever young people went in Boston. It wasn’t a replacement for the downtown of some metropolis, but a nice camping trip would likely do the boy’s nerves’ good. Besides, he’d never had the chance to go camping with his own father, like Engie and Sniper had.

 

That last part was laying it on a bit thick, but Sniper had agreed. Scout had been getting antsy recently, and Sniper considered him a friend, even if he had been getting antsy recently, which translated to pure obnoxiousness in Scout. Hopefully he would mellow. Scout was more focused on pestering than actual conversation the past few days, and Sniper missed hearing him chat. (Not that he’d say it. Sniper was pretty sure that would make it weird.)

 

He barely got through asking Scout if he had any plans before Scout was running to go pack. A mound of extra shirts, balls, comics, a radio, swimsuits, and a worrying lack of clean underwear was rapidly manifesting in front him him. A thousand ideas of how they could spend the weekend were tumbling out of the younger man’s mouth. Now he and Sniper could get away from all those crusty, grumpy old farts and have some real fun!

 

(Sniper wondered whether he was supposed to be in the “kid” or “adult” category, and why they had those categories if everyone was over twenty. This question would go into the extensive “think about and never ask” pile.)

 

Engie apparently began to feel a little guilty unloading the problem onto Sniper, so he nudged Demo into coughing up a few beers that would accompany a nice campfire best. The four of them stood around the collection trying to choose, but between the indecisive Sniper and the unpicky Scout, it was mostly Engie and Demo arguing the brews’ merits. Demo kept offering up his favorite “fun” beers, before Engie would shoot them down for clashing with the campfire mood. Demo, usually the man with a beer for any plan, admitted he’d never drank beer while sitting around a campfire on a trip, while Engie waxed on about the timeless experience. Needless to say, he was horrified.

 

Demo and Engie had joined the party.

 

As they began to pack, eventually deciding to bring a sampling of Demo’s entire stash so they could have a campfire tasting, Medic caught sight and started to get into a huff. Engineer was supposed to be telling him about his new schematics this weekend, so he could get started on the lab write-up, so Engie could determine how many receptacles they needed to build, so….something very sciency could happen. Well then, Medic would just have to come along and bring a notebook, Engie reasoned. Medic surprisingly agreed. (This made Sniper worried.)

 

It was unclear whether Demo then invited Soldier, or Soldier invited himself along on having a Great American Pastime with his buddy, but suddenly Soldier was packing his expired rations and survival guides at a feverish pace. (Now Sniper was even more worried.)

 

Pyro definitely invited themself a long. There was a promise of Engie, fire, and games. They were coming and would not take no. (Sniper was now extremely worried.)

 

Heavy, observant as always, sensed that the balance of the party was tilted dangerously in favor of the uncontrolled half of the team and mentioned he wanted to try reading outside, staring meaningfully at Sniper. The help was gratefully accepted. 

 

With eight out of nine now committed to the trip, Spy began to gleefully imagine time all alone in his smoking room, free to sip wine, make a few “private” phone calls to Boston, and enjoy the silence. Heavy interrupted his reverie with a sharp elbow and a twitch of the eyebrows. Spy was coming too, to the devastation of several parties.

 

And so, the motley caravan of Sniper’s van, the “bread” truck and Engie’s truck set off across the badlands.

 

Sniper hoped desperately for the miracle of tranquility. (He knew better, but treated himself to a little hope anyway.)

  
  


They made it twenty minutes before things started to unravel. In the bread van, Medic and Heavy were attempting to play twenty questions, with increasingly loud interruptions by Soldier, who could not hear the clues and felt left out. Spy, sitting beside him, felt that his hearing was about to leave. He attempted a subtle neck pinch maneuver for knocking out foes he picked up many years ago, but Soldier had one of the rare necks impervious to such attacks. He then did what he always did when a hand was too close to his face without his permission, and bit it. Spy’s finger survived, but his very expensive glove did not.

 

They pulled over, to let Spy and Medic switch places. Scout got a hearty laugh about the whole thing while they were stopped. Both Spy and Medic were unhappy with matters, but Soldier could hear the clues better and was pleased with his advanced tactics.

  
  


The next incident was Scout noticing a loose piece of Sniper’s van and being unable to unnotice it. He had been in the middle of a funny story, and rapidly approaching a very dirty punchline, when he suddenly stopped dead.

 

Sniper almost began to wonder if the joke was over and he was supposed to be laughing, before Scout spoke again.

 

“The hell is  _ that? _ ” he asked, gesturing to where he was looking at the top of the windshield.

 

Sniper tried to follow his gaze. “A cloud?”

 

Scout growled in frustration. “No no no, not that, on the van, the whap whap whap whap thing.”

 

There was indeed a piece of rope repeatedly smacking the windshield. It was a holdover from when he had tied a crocodile to the top of the van that chewed through that rope. The knot was a difficult one, and Sniper had forgotten to untie it when untying all the others, and then put it off until the rope had become normal driving background noise. “Mate, it’s just from a thing. Don’t worry about it, you’ll forget about it in a tick.”

 

Sniper tried to tell his crocodile story, which turned out to be three times as long as it should have been due to Sniper backing up the story no less than five times to explain something he had forgotten in the set-up. How Scout, Demo and Medic pulled off their storytelling so effortlessly was beyond him.

 

Scout grunted at Sniper’s story, but continued to stare down the string. “Yo Snipes, you gonna do something about that piece of crap?”

 

“Wasn’t planning on it, m- _ oh fucking hell what are you doing get back inside _ \--” 

 

Scout had unbuckled himself and was making it up the side of the van in record time, and began working at the complex not with one foot on the rearview mirror and one on the door. Sniper bellowed demands to get back in until the other cars began honking frantically.

 

They pulled over again. Pyro burned the knot off, and part of Sniper’s van, while Spy accused Sniper and his vehicle of every insult in the dictionary. 

  
  
  


The next stop was at the pipeline. A tollbooth and chainlink fence stood in front of them. Their employer and his rival’s constant war of sabotage meant that anything and everything could be heavily guarded.

 

As Sniper pulled up to the booth, the guard tried to repel him with the dirtiest look he could muster. It was positively filthy, but fortunately Sniper had never been one to be scared off by a little dirt.

 

“What business do you have in this here road, son?” He punctuated every other word with a noisy smack of gum chewing, and spat the last word so hard his gum nearly accompanied it. Sniper also noticed he couldn’t have been more than three years his senior.

 

“Trying to get to the other side of it.”

 

The guard’s nostrils flared dangerously beneath his sunglasses. “This here’s private property. Drive around.” The pipeline extended outside of New Mexico and the fence likely did as well. Sniper didn’t particularly care to find out.

 

He gradually leaned out of his window. “We’re employees mate. Done a hell of a lot more guarding old Redmond’s properties than you have sitting here reading magazines.”

 

It was at this point, close-up, that he noticed the man’s ID read “Builder’s League United”. The guard’s entire being twitched. This was the wrong checkpoint.

 

He stepped on the gas and barreled over the cheap fencing, with the others following suit. Medic, who was currently driving the middle van, checked the booth for good measure. Demo, from the last truck, chucked a grenade at the remaining fences. Blutarch lost a lot of fencing and an employee’s sunglasses that day.

  
  


The planned hour and a half drive ended up taking a total of four, between the previous incidents, attempted cross-car dance parties, stopping to fill the gas-guzzling “bread” truck, and a very close call with a traffic collision.

 

Not as bad as Sniper had been expecting, in all honesty.

 

It was near dinner time when they finally arrived. What Sniper had always done was bring some veggies and taters, kill something he found and dump it all in a pan over his fire. The entirety of the team made that less feasible tonight.

 

Even besides the large quantities of beer, several tupperwares of food had come along. There were Sniper’s potatoes and broccoli, but also bread, chips, pickles, five steaks, kit-kats, smoked sausages, a pound of asparagus, wine, a hearty slice of cheddar, olive oil, a large pile of questionable tins labeled as “rations”, hot dogs, a pint of rocky road, and four sandwiches. Even more amazing than the assortment of food was that it all survived, except the pint of ice cream. Scout was going to have to clean that out of the van later.

 

Engie brought firewood, and Pyro was sent out in search of kindling. Unsurprisingly, they had an excellent nose(/snout? Who knows?) for flammable materials, but had to be sent without any of their fire starting equipment, or else Pyro was liable to use it all up before they got back.

 

Heavy, Demo and Scout were unloading the vans. Originally it was only going to be the former two, but Scout had volunteered himself for the task as well. The problem there was when he tried to carry as much as Heavy did each trip, and nearly shattered the crock pot before Heavy caught him.

 

Heavy, ever the subtle diplomat, found the largest, lightest items to load onto their youngest teammate.

 

Medic was trying to set up a private reading area for Heavy, Engie and himself, and had attempted to enlist the help of Soldier. Soldier had located the reading materials and instead attempted to make fortifications. Medic scanned for a better assistant.

 

Sniper took that as a cue to make himself scarce.

  
  


Bunker’s worth of snack foods or no, Sniper still planned to catch his own meat. Really, it made him nostalgic for the Outback--the one part of Australia he did feel nostalgia for. He had traded in big game for meal sized animals, and one ecosystem for another, but carefully tracking his way through a sandy landscape made him feel comfortable. At home, even.

 

A jackrabbit thirty paces off laid surely at the end of the trail he had followed. It was gamey meat, sure, but he was fond of rabbit meat. Much more interesting than the bland American beef they got. Sniper had gone old school for this, with his bow and arrow. Lining up a good shot from behind a bush was child’s play for him at this point. He was more worried about the ease making him careless than anything else. Pulling back the arrow brought a satisfying tenseness to his muscles, and as he released--

 

He elbowed something very hard, and yelped. The thing he elbowed let out a choked breath and fell over, followed by a very familiar noise.

 

  
“The  _ hell _ are you doing, Spy?!”

 

The indignant question went unanswered for a solid few minutes, as Sniper had made an incredible (un)lucky blow straight into the frenchman’s solar plexus. He felt right angry, but it turned out to be hard to hold a fiery glare at someone who was comically gasping like a fish in his suit.

 

After a sputtering reboot of Spy’s respiratory system, he struggled to a sitting position, not quite looking at Sniper. After a pause, he gave a typically aloof and vague answer. “Observing.” Bloody spies.

 

But then… “What’s so interesting about me on a hunt?”

 

A scowl flashed across Spy’s face. Sniper was no sherlock, but was insightful enough to occasionally catch his teammate off guard.

 

“I wished to see… how your skillset differed in a recreational setting.” 

 

Sniper sneered. “Never had to get the meat yourself, eh? Was the butcher getting a little boring?” He wasn’t particularly pleased to have Spy following him cloaked so he could gawk at Sniper’s primitive ways. The prissy old bastard should’ve done something useful and helped with the reading corner, Sniper thought.

 

Something unexpected flashed in Spy’s eyes. “You make assumptions, Bushman. ” Again, vague, but...apparently, surprisingly, sincere? He did feel a little presumptuous now. Maybe Spy had been through some bizarro intensive training. (There were a lot of maybes when it came to Spy.)

 

On the other hand, Spy had not apologized for stalking, and Sniper was reluctant to offer the olive branch first. He tried for a middle ground. “Make an ass out of you and me, yeah?”

 

Spy stared blankly. (Shit.)

 

He coughed. “Yknow, that thing Scout says about assumptions.” 

 

Spy made a noise of recognition.

 

Neither of them spoke the whole way back.

  
  


The food was good. With Engie taking the wheel, he expected nothing less, but Spy had made a few surprising donations to the meal as well. He had to admit, that pouring a bunch of wine on food made it better, and that the asparagus was good. On par with Engie’s cheesy taters. (Damn good.)

 

Sniper was surprised by others wanting to try his rabbit. He’d assumed no one but him would want the tough old desert creature, but as the meat vanished he had to fend off teammates trying to take very large “tastes.” Scout especially was the last person he thought would’ve wanted some, but after Demo made a joke about Scout being afraid of cannibalism (that Sniper honestly didn’t get) he shoved aside the others for a bite. It was, he admitted between bites, not as good as the steaks or his ma’s cooking, but pretty good. Sniper felt something warm in his heart.

 

The beer supply did come in handy, as everyone helped themselves to several during and after dinner. Engie and Demo’s spirited discussion about situational beers continued, and Sniper didn’t get it. It was almost all good beer in his opinion, except for that one bizarrely yeasty brew. As he enjoyed the tasting though, he decided against getting into the discussion. That would entail having to understand what they had said so far. Medic on the other hand started in on it as well, and Spy disparaged the lack of hard cider. Soldier was confused on which one was the American beer that he should be supporting without question.

 

The discussion continued over cleanup and setting up the beds, finishing in some heartfelt compromise between Demo and Engie that Sniper still didn’t understand. Everyone started settling in for the night, now that the heated conversation was resolved. Sniper hesitated, however.

 

The beds looked very close together. Kinda crowded, even.

 

“Goodnight,” he said, and started towards his van instead, hoping no one would question him.

 

“Does Sniper usually sleep in van?” That damn perceptive Heavy.

 

Demo chimed in. “Last time ye were talking about that rock ye slept on.” That damn perceptive Demo.

 

He tried to shrug it off and get into the van. “What, are we too smelly for you? Cmon, I slept with seven brothers my whole life, you can get through one night with a couple of other dudes.” Damn Scout!

 

“You are joining this bonding session, maggot!” Damn Soldier. He was then tackled to the ground, and amended the thought to  _ motherfucking Soldier _ . He was sandwiched between Soldier and Medic, and no one had any intention of letting him out of the circle.

 

Piss.

  
  
  
  


He learned a lot that night about stars.

 

Engie made a comment about the Big Dipper looking bright tonight.

 

“Which one is that again?” Sniper asked. 

 

The whole team was aghast. Everyone knew the Big Dipper. Sure, some of them had different names for it, but they all knew that constellation at least. Sniper had to remind him that he was from the southern hemisphere, and Engie had to assure them that yes, you did see different stars depending on where you lived.

 

That was how the world’s worst organized astronomy lesson began. First, he learned seven different names for the big dipper, several from Spy who felt like showing off, and how it pointed to the North Star, which was always due north. Then he learned Pegasus, a big square looking one, and Orion, the big hunter. Scout snickered at Orion’s armpit being named “Beetlejuice”. (“Non, it’s  _ betelgeuse _ .” “Beetlejuice! That’s what I said!”) 

 

There was Andromeda, and Cassiopeia, and Hercules, and suddenly all the Greek myths associated with them were being included as well. (Poor Orion.) Heavy chipped in about the Zoryas and Simargl. Demo told some stories he claimed the Scottish fae had told him. 

 

As they settled in, he learned a few things about his teammates that night. Scout was a cuddly drunk, and had found his way to Heavy’s arm. Heavy was quite alright with being cuddled. Medic tossed and turned the whole night and Soldier was stock still. Spy snored (unsurprising given his laugh) but seemed to interrupt himself with unsettling noises. Demo took up as much space as possible. Pyro slept with a plushie. Engie took off his gunslinger before bed.

 

Sniper learned how it felt to sleep in between other people. Sniper learned the sound of others breathing softly in sleep.

 

Sniper learned that he kind of enjoyed this whole team thing, suddenly.


End file.
